Gail Gauthier's Blog: Gail Gauthier Reads, page 14

Where Was I Last Month?

I made a few appearances around the Web last month.



Finding Wonderland: The Writing YA Weblog An Author's Take on Self-Publishing



City Muse, Country Muse April 2013 Carnival of Children's Literature



The Book Designer Self-Publishing: Carnival of the Indies Issue #31



The Bibliophilic Book Blog Interview with Gail Gauthier



Thank you to all these bloggers.

Originally published at Original Content.

Carnival of the Indies

I'm included in this month's Carnival of the Indies at The Book Designer. It's one of the larger carnival's I've been part of and will probably require a month for me to check out the other blog stops.

My World Book Night Experience

Sigh. After filling out an application to become a WBN Giver, being accepted, waiting for a couple of months for the big day, picking up my books last week, creating bookmarks and a poster...I ended up spending World Book Night in my pajamas on my couch, barely able to watch TV.

That's right. It was not what I expected. But my World Book Night went on without me.

Two Internet Visits For Me This Week

I guest blogged twice this week.

On Monday I was at Alison Pearce Stevens where I wrote about marketing my Saving the Planet & Stuff as an eBook rather than a hardcover, which is what it originally was.

Yesterday I was GreenBeanTeenQueen where I wrote about reconciling my library/book past with this business of publishing an eBook.

My Afternoon With Toulouse-Lautrec

A local museum has a Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit that I've been thinking of visiting for a while. Years ago, I went to a Van Gogh exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada. I was by myself because the rest of the family went off to some military museum. I walked into the gallery and there on the wall across from me was a painting of a vase of irises. I was quite stunned by the idea that Van Gogh had touched a painting that I was so close to. It wasn't so much that he'd painted it, it was that he had touched it while doing so.
So I always hope for that same jolt when I go to see an exhibit of the works of someone I've heard of.

I'm busy, though, and I don't know a lot about Toulouse-Lautrec, so I wasn't in a rush to get there. But, then, this past week I started reading Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore. It's a marvelous combination of historical novel, comedy, and fantasy. And Toulouse-Lautrec appears as a secondary character.

What's more, the book is illustrated with paintings by a number of late nineteenth century French artists. A lot of the paintings are Toulouse-Latrec's. That got me to the museum.

The exhibit is called "Toulouse-Lautrec and His World," and includes 150 works on paper--posters, sketches, illustrations from magazines and books. I didn't have any profound Van Gogh experience. I carried my library copy of Sacre Bleu, and found two of the illustrations from the book on the wall of the museum. In addition, because this exhibit was about Toulouse-Lautrec's world, there were write ups about Montmarte, the setting of the book I'm reading, references to red-haired women, who appear in the book, and material about Toulouse-Lautrec's relationships with the women of the clubs and brothels he frequented. Which we get a lot of in the book, too.

I can't wait to get back to reading.

"Saving The Planet & Stuff" Is Now An eBook

Yes, finally, the eBook edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff has been published and is available for both Kindle and Nook.



I believe my first mention of this project here at OC was on March 1 of 2012 (when we hadn't yet settled on the spelling "eBook"), so it has been very, very close to a year that the Saving the Plant eBook has been in the works. Go back to Saturday's post on publishing to get an idea of what we've been dealing with while I've been trying to juggle other work-related tasks that are in various stages and my computer guy/publishing partner has been holding down a full-time job.



You'll continue to hear about my experiment in self-publishing as I work on promoting this title over the coming months.

Originally published at Original Content.

The "Write the Book" Interview With Castle Freeman, Jr.

Tonight while working in the kitchen, I listened to a Write the Book podcast. I love these things, and I particularly liked the one I listened to tonight, an interview with Castle Freeman, Jr. whose book, "All That I Have," I also loved

I don't hear anywhere near as much talk about voice in adult literature as I do in children's and YA (especially YA) books. "All That I Have" is an example of an adult book in which voice is important.

In the "Write the Book" interview, Freeman said that "Speech is action," and that it is "great fun to write talk." I found this thought provoking. It's something that I think could help me in my own writing.

New Bebe News

I enjoyed Pamela Druckerman's book, Bringing Up Bebe, more for the memoir aspects than the childrearing. I also read a little French (very little) and enjoy books that offer a phrase or deux.

Druckerman has a new book out, Bebe Day By Day and is doing a parenting "workshop" at the Huffington Post.

My Cybils Reading Roundup

I did some binge reading at the end of last year off the Cybils nomination lists. But I also just happened to have read a few books over the course of the year that would later end up being nominated. What follows is a roundup of my Cybils reading. A lot of these things I reviewed here at GoodReads.

Fox and Crow Are Not Friends, Melissa Wiley

Ivy + Bean No News Is Good News, Annie Barrows

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, The Unseen Ghost Maryrose Wood

The One and Only Ivan, Katherine Applegate

Cinder, Marissa Meyer

The Brides of Rollrock Island, Margo Lanagan

Fangbone! Third Grade Barbarian, Michael Rex

Friends With Boys, Faith Erin Hicks

One for the Murphys, Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Ungifted, Gordon Korman

Minette's Feast, Susannah Reich

Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein

I Hunt Killers, Barry Lyga

Keeping the Castle, Patrice Kindl

Scarlet, A.C. Gaughen

Was "The Handmaid's Tale" The Mother Of Contemporary Apocalytpic Novels?

I am not a fan of apocalyptic novels, because I find them so formulaic. There's not a lot new in them. I did like The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood when I read it back in the day. That was in spite of finding the basic premise--that Fundamentalist Christians had a snowball's chance of taking over the country and that men wanted their wives to give up their function as earners--way over the top and very improbable. I think I liked it because it was probably the first apocalyptic novel I can recall reading.

I've been thinking about all this because I saw the movie this past weekend for the first time since it was in the theaters...oh, a long time ago. While watching it, I thought, Hey, this is The Hunger Games with sex. Because apocalyptic novels really are very formulaic.

Cora, the Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern) was in it, which I'd totally forgotten. She was terrific.